


A Study in Powerlessness

by celli



Category: Enola Holmes (2020)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Mild Painplay, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rope Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:02:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/pseuds/celli
Summary: "I would love to see [Edith] continuing to set Sherlock in his place, particularly if that involved her sitting on his face." - etben
Relationships: Edith Grayston/Sherlock Holmes
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	A Study in Powerlessness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etben](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etben/gifts).



> Thank you to a number of cheerleaders, including the entire M discord!
> 
> Special thanks to C and E for beta work, and W for costuming assistance.

Sherlock could hear the waitress’s low murmur from where he stood flipping through a book. “Miss Grayston, ma’am, that man is here again.”

“Oh, I can take care of him,” Miss Grayston said, and Sherlock told himself he was too logical to take offense at the humor in her tone.

He followed the sounds of her moving throughout the cafe, talking to staff and customers. “Mr. Holmes,” she said without looking at him as she passed the bookshelves, and he followed her into the kitchen. She was dressed to blend in again, this time in a forest green gown that was otherwise identical in design to the dress he’d first seen her in.

“A pleasure to see you again, Miss Grayston,” he said.

She shot him a look. “I don’t believe either of us is here for social niceties, Mr. Holmes,” she said, reaching for a plate of pastries. “No, I have not seen your sister. No, I have no news about your mother. Unless you’re here for a ginger bun or a conversation on women’s suffrage, you can show yourself to the door.”

“Very well, then,” he said. 

She strode out of the kitchen. Sherlock picked up the key she’d left on the table and headed for the steps to the upper apartments.

***

The sound of his shoes on the bare floor echoed oddly in the open room. Sherlock looked at the mats stacked up against the far wall, noting the missing one idly as he made his way into the office.

The mat, not unexpectedly, was lying on the floor in the office, in front of the window. There was still a faint tinge of gunpowder in the air, though there was no trace of any source of it, nor had there been at any time Sherlock had been in the room. The top of the desk had been cleared of all but a coil of rope. Sherlock raised an eyebrow at it. He wandered the room, arms behind his back, deliberately calculating its dimensions and the history of its few furnishings.

By the time Edith entered the room, Sherlock was seated on the corner of the desk, cleaning dust off the face of his pocket watch with a handkerchief. He stood as she approached.

“What a gentleman,” she said, smiling slightly. “A gentleman wearing far too much clothing. See to that, if you don’t mind.” She folded her arms as he shucked his jacket.

Sherlock made it all the way to his drawers before he hesitated, looking down to fold the rest of his clothes carefully and lay them on the chair. 

“All of it,” she said.

He took a deep breath, then removed his drawers and laid them over the top of the pile of clothes. The handkerchief was still on the desktop, next to the rope, and he dropped it atop the pile.

“Well done,” Edith said, coming up behind him. Sherlock turned to face her, uncomfortably aware that he was half-hard. He schooled his face into what he hoped would pass for neutrality. From the look on Edith’s face, she was less than convinced. She pointed at the mat. Sherlock obediently sat, then at her further gesture, lay down on his back. 

“Arms up,” she said. 

Sherlock looked up at her. “Excuse me?”

“You wanted powerlessness?” she asked. “Or at least a reasonable facsimile?”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Then he put his hands on the ground over his head, clenched into fists. Her hand covered his eyes for a moment and he obediently closed them.

The rope was rough and uncomfortable, but the knots she tied were not painful. Sherlock flexed his wrists, testing. She must have tied the other ends of the rope firmly to the bottom of the filing cabinet near his head. He pulled harder, but her knots held. He took a long, steadying breath and opened his eyes.

Edith was looking down at him - at his bound wrists, from the angle of her gaze. She pivoted and walked the length of his body. As she turned to face him again, her skirt brushed against the soles of his feet; he surprised himself by failing to stifle a noise. She smiled, just a little, and a shiver ran down his spine. 

She walked slowly back towards his head, deliberately swinging her skirts so that they brushed against his bare skin. Sherlock twitched away when she reached his knee, but forced himself back down. Two more slow steps brought her to his prick, and a groan escaped his clenched teeth. 

One more step, two, three, and then Edith stepped over him with her right foot until she stood over his head. Her skirts and petticoats fell across his forearms and chest, abruptly dimming the light to almost nothing.

Sherlock jerked against the ropes frantically. His breath came faster and faster, but the ropes held.

“You know what to do if you want to stop,” Edith said from a long distance away.

Sherlock forced in one breath and held it, then another. He brought his upper arm within reach and bit down on it, hard, until the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears receded. He deliberately opened his fists, feeling his muscles relax. He let his head roll back away from his arm.

“Well done indeed,” Edith said, and Sherlock sighed.

Edith knelt above him. Sherlock turned his head to one side and felt only skin, with no drawers between him and her warm flesh.

“Sherlock,” Edith said, and he lifted his head in the dark until he could set his mouth on her sex.

With her skirts fully around him, the difference between opening and closing his eyes was minimal. Sherlock concentrated on her taste and the faint sounds of her body against his. He felt her skin against his face and his tongue, surely, but also her knees pressing against the inside of his arms and, more distantly, a pressure against his wrists. Edith shifted her weight infinitesimally further against him and he took the hint to increase his efforts. He couldn’t quite use tongue and breath on her exactly as he had before - exactly as she’d taught him - but he was clever, and he adapted. He even managed just a brush of teeth when she least expected it.

He heard her gasp, the only time she’d made a sound loud enough for him to hear since she’d said his name. At the same time, the muscles of her thighs tensed against him and she jerked back. Sherlock dropped his head to the ground, panting. He pulled on his bonds until the urge to jerk his hips into the air diminished a little.

“Good,” Edith said, a little breathlessly if he could credit himself. “Good, Sherlock.”

He drew a shaky breath in, let it out solidly. “Thank you,” he said.

With the kind of grace only the dangerous Edith was capable of, she pushed to her feet and moved away. Sherlock blinked against the light. He rotated his wrists, wincing as the friction from the rope made itself known, as well as the tension in both shoulders and elbows for so long.

Edith bent over his hands. “Don’t move,” she said, and untied the rope with quick, confident motions. Sherlock kept his eyes open this time. The ropes left his wrists, and he started to bend his elbows. “I said don’t move,” she said mildly, and he put his hands back on the mat.

She dropped the rope and knelt next to him. Sherlock bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. Edith wasted no time; she put her hand on his prick and began stroking. Sherlock felt more than heard himself groan.

Every muscle in his body screamed to move, to jerk away from her or closer to her, to replace her implacably slow hand on him with his own, to do _something_. Sherlock focused on the stretch in his shoulders, the numbness in his fingers, anything except his arousal and her knowing expression.

“Lower your hands,” Edith said.

“What?” he asked, but his arms were moving as he spoke.

As his hands fell to the mat at his side, the blood rushed through his arms, flooding him with sensation all along both limbs and making the burns on his wrists flare with pain. Sherlock shouted - and then cried out again, as his orgasm wracked his body in the next moment.

Edith sat by his side, face unreadable, until he had stopped shaking from both events. She stood and picked up the handkerchief from atop the pile of clothing. She wiped her hand off. Then she dropped it on his stomach.

“Do you understand it now?”

“Powerlessness?” Sherlock asked. He cleared his throat. He would not stumble over his own tongue, dammit. He was Sherlock Holmes. “Perhaps. But I think I understand you even more, Miss Grayston.”

“Hm,” she said. “Leave the key on the desk.” And she walked away. Sherlock heard the door shut behind him and sat up carefully, rubbing his wrists.

Perhaps he might better understand himself, as well as Miss Edith Grayston, he thought.


End file.
